Imagine it’s 40 years from now. A man walks into a Newton convenience store and asks for a pack of cigarettes.
The clerk tells him that the store can’t sell him those cigarettes because of his age. He’s only 59 years old. He walks outside and asks his older friend, a 70-year-old man, to buy the cigarettes for him.
While this scenario may seem weird, it can also be possible someday, with an ordinance change set for a vote by the City Council Programs & Services Committee.
“It’s really a movement,” Committee Chair Joshua Krintzman said. “The American Heart Association is promoting it to get more cities and towns to phase out smoking.”
Tobacco-free generation
In 2020, Brookline passed an amendment to the town’s tobacco sales bylaw prohibiting sale of tobacco products to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2000, which went into effect in 2021.
Unlike the signs displayed at stores showing a date 18 years prior—with that date going up by one day each day—the new ordinance keeps that date in place, eventually phasing out tobacco sales to a large age group.
The goal was to produce a tobacco-free generation (the ordinance was even named Tobacco-free generation), and the new bylaw amendment was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in March.
With the state’s highest court giving the green light, Newton officials want to follow suit.
There’s currently a proposal to ban tobacco sales to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2004, set to take effect next year if approved. That would start the tobacco sales age at 21 but the next year it would be 22. Then 23, and so on.
The goals are to make it more difficult over time to purchase tobacco in Newton and to remove potential tobacco customers from the market every year.
The Programs & Services Committee has been discussing the proposal since the spring. And Krintzman said he expects it to come to a committee vote this fall before heading to a full City Council vote.
Both Stoneham and Wakefield passed similar bylaws in the spring, and Melrose passed a similar ordinance last month.
Health vs. liberty?
Opponents of the new ordinance say it infringes on adults’ right to partake in something that’s legal both in the state and federally.
“This issue is about liberty, not tobacco,” Newton resident Steve Snider recently wrote in a Letter to the Editor. “Newton’s adults are, well, adults. It is not inconsistent to disapprove of tobacco use while acknowledging that we do not need an overreaching government telling us what legal products or services we may or may not consume because the Councilors disapprove.”
Krintzman acknowledged that there will be a lot of varying opinions about whether the proposal infringes on people’s rights, but he noted that the state’s highest court already sanctioned the idea when Brookline implemented it.
The committee has received some emails from concerned business owners, Krintzman added, who think the restriction will hurt local stores that sell tobacco.
There are currently 36 businesses in Newton that sell tobacco products.
In April, when the committee first discussed the Tobacco-Free Generation proposal, committee members largely expressed support for the spirit of the idea, though there were concerns about the principle of the ordinance.
Councilor David Micley, who, as a Town Meeting member in Brookline years ago, helped get that town to raise the tobacco sales age to 21 (before that policy went statewide), said he was conflicted when it comes to a ban.
“There are some philosophical issues I have with the idea of restricting an entire generation, regardless of how old they become, from making decisions that those who are that old are already allowed to make,” Micley said. “What we’re basically saying is that future 25-year-olds, or 30-year-olds, or 40-year-olds, or 60-year-olds, will eventually not be able to buy cigarettes, cigars or any tobacco products in Newton. It’s just a question of what the role of government is, how much we can control, and what the unintended consequences are.”
Micley suggested focusing on efforts to keep tobacco products from minors.
At that same meeting, Councilor Susan Albright said she understood Micley’s concerns, because she opposed a ban on flavored tobacco products years ago when then-City Councilor Greg Schwartz was pushing for that ban.
That ban passed, and Albright said she’s now glad it did. And she supports the Tobacco-Free Generation proposal.
“Anything that we can do to keep our society healthier is a good thing,” Albright said, adding that she hopes the policy eventually becomes a state law.
Even Councilor John Oliver, who said he’s generally opposed to governments banning things, supported the proposal.
“Nicotine and nicotine products—yeah, they can all go,” Oliver said. “There’s absolutely no positive benefit, or neutral aspect even, to anyone ever, regardless of how they may be discussed in certain marketing circles.”
You can watch that entire meeting here. [Tobacco discussion starts around 25 minutes into the meeting]